Canada's Environmental Voice
The tranquil and barren island of Rapa Nui, commonly known as Easter Island, illustrates the rich cultural and ecological history of the self-sustaining Rapa Nui civilization that existed in complete isolation from the 13th – 17th century A.D. The island’s several hundred abandoned megalithic statues (moai) stand tall amongst the […]
It isn’t the burgeoning global human population that is the main threat to planetary sustainability, but rather the escalating expectations of a global human population rapidly committing itself in ever-increasing waves to the current Western “mindset.” This mindset, crystallized by modern economics, generates a world in which economic actors operate […]
In their endorsement of Demystifying Sustainability, Paul and Anne Ehrlich state, “Sustainability may be the most important … and most misused word in our language. This brilliant, deep, accurate, well-referenced book should do wonders to rectify that. It should be required reading for every high-school student, CEO and politician.” I would also […]
Our grade 10 English teacher claimed that all literature is about conflict – within the person, among people, or between humans and nature. She then assigned us to put each of our readings into one or more of the three conflict boxes. We ought to have rebelled. We ought to […]
“Science insists that we can’t express particulars. But we love things in particular, not in general … and when you love something in particular, you’re not inclined to see that it could be replaced by anything else.” – Karen Houle, writer-in-residence, rare Charitable Research Reserve.
Please click here to download the audio (MP3). NASA’s powerful Kepler telescope has shown that almost all stars in our galaxy have planets. This breathes new life into the Fermi Paradox, which considers why, given the age of the universe and vast number of planets, we have not encountered alien […]
The birds got to sing and dance. The moose had to grow a huge unwieldy rack and bash heads with it. Maybe once, back in the evolutionary mists, a less elaborate version of that strategy had made some sense. But now he would rather be a bird. Meanwhile in the […]
The world has seen many versions of Napoleon and his Russian campaign. Probably they have been with us forever. The ancient Greeks saw the phenomenon often enough to adopt “hubris” as the word for the dangerous combination of arrogance and error, overconfidence and disrespect.
Western medicine has made great strides in disease control in the last century. Diagnostic technologies and surgical procedures have advanced. Life expectancy has increased dramatically in most parts of the world. Antibiotics, improvements in sanitation and hygiene, as well as vaccines, have eradicated or reduced many of the world’s deadliest […]
Originally published on Stephen Bocking’s blog Environment, History, Science. There’s a lot that can be said about the relations between environmental history and science. Historians often use scientific knowledge to figure out past environments – and science itself is a focus of historical study.
